Omar Victor Diop

Biography

Senegalese self-taught photographer Omar Victor Diop’s portraits capture the diversity of modern African societies through the portraiture of its inhabitants by layering genres, color, and patterns to create stunningly vivid imagery. Grounding his practice in his childhood experiences in Dakar, Diop sites influences ranging from American popular culture (e.g., Michael Jackson) to Arabic music. Diop’s first conceptual project Fashion 2112, The Future of Beauty, featured at the Pan African Exhibition of the African Biennale of Photography of 2011 in Bamako, gained rapid recognition, which led him to committing to photography exclusively. Featured is his series The Studio of Vanities, in which he captures the young entrepreneurs of Africa’s urban culture, including fashion designers, visual artists, and models. The series’ objective is to draw attention to the prospering cultural scene of Dakar, Senegal and to highlight the talented people who are behind this development. Diop thoughtfully selects the backdrops, patterns, and apparel to emphasize his model’s personality and cultural attributions, while also collaborating with the subject on these decisions to portray an accurate portrait of their individuality.

Senegalese Photographer Omar Victor Diop’s Regal Portraiture

December 6, 2018

The Washington Post details how Omar Victor Diop’s work ‘recasts history and the global politics of black resistance’

Omar Victor Diop's photography spotlights Black Resistance

August 3, 2018

Omar Victor Diop is changing the art world by inserting himself and his experiences as a Senegalese artist into scenarios of resistance. His photography challenges the viewer on the racial implications fighting.

Sally Mann and Portraiture: A Group Photography Exhibition Featured in The Bay Area Reporter

In the Eyes & Minds of Beholders

The unself-conscious, joyfully naked children in the photographs of Sally Mann are like forest sprites, splashing in the cool water of a muddy river at twilight, frolicking in the languid Southern summer, or swooping through the primordial woods within whose depths lurks black magic. That's the uneasy spell cast by Mann, a respected photographer who, as a young mother with three youngsters, enlisted her children to be her models. It was a critical decision that has yielded mythic, nostalgic, even feral black & white pictures and no small amount of controversy. The response to the children's nudity, in particular, has led to censorship in several prominent publications and sometimes obscured her artistic accomplishment. There have been objections to her kids being too young to understand the implications of their poses, some of which are provocative; accusations of child abuse; fear of pedophiles and stalkers; as well as child pornography laws that threaten the artist and the pursuit of her work. Though Mann has said she thinks "childhood sexuality is an oxymoron," and emphatically stated that her photographs are not erotic, it's what's in the eye and mind of beholders that's troubling and difficult to reconcile.